


Sorry Never Made It Feel Alright

by littleredchurro



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men (Original Trilogy)
Genre: M/M, Old!Magneto, Old!Professor X
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-15
Updated: 2015-06-15
Packaged: 2018-04-04 12:44:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4138059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleredchurro/pseuds/littleredchurro
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An apology that has been fifty years in the making.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sorry Never Made It Feel Alright

**Author's Note:**

> Music Used: 30 Lives - Imagine Dragons

     Time heals all wounds. That was the saying, wasn't it? Give something old and painful enough time and it won't hurt as much? Maybe the interpretation got lost somewhere along the way, because that has always proven extremely and excruciatingly incorrect for Charles Xavier. True, he knew how to forgive and while he wasn't especially good at forgetting, he wasn't awful at knowing how to put things behind him. But that didn't mean it was  _healed_. There was ugly scar tissue from the wound itself and from the festering blisters that had come from the infection. Scar tissue didn't mean it was  _healed_. It was an acknowledgement that it happened but that you'd always carry it with you. And there were many things the professor carried with him from his life. His mother, his stepbrother, his stepfather, his sister, Gabrielle, David. It was all there, scars on the mind, pieces of gray matter turned into jagged silvery lines. But only one haunted him unlike the others, only one name that still left his stomach hollow and his heart heavy, only one scar that hadn't quite built up enough rough tissue to cover up the wound beneath: Erik Lehnsherr. Fifty years and he still wondered what could have been done differently, what he should have said or  _shouldn't_ have said (it took him a good amount of time to accept that using the Nuremberg Defense on a Holocaust survivor hadn't been his most shining of moments). He'd been over it, under it, through it and around it over and over again through the years, replaying the events and following the thread of different decisions to see what conclusion would come of it. Sometimes Erik stayed, most of the times he didn't. Charles had had to eventually accept that Erik's decision had been of his own volition and he himself wasn't to blame, if only to save his sanity. It hadn't made any of it  _okay_ though. The pain was still there, it still haunted him at night, it still plagued him during the day, especially when the news flashed a headline with the moniker of  _Magneto_ in the title. It was 2015 now, over fifty years since that awful day in Cuba and all of the awful things Erik had done in between, and still he missed him. 

 

     There weren't many things Erik Lehnsherr was truly  _apologetic_ for in his lifetime, certainly not after his adoption of the name "Magneto." After that, he'd mostly done only and everything what he felt was necessary, what was right. True, there was remorse on occasion for the innocents that got swept up in the tidal wave of war, but never regret. Any grievances he had with himself came at a time when he was still Erik (and before that, Max). Those times... those times he had much to apologize for, most of them never spoken or spoken only on already-dead ears or, worse, spoken in a heat of moment that cheapened the true meaning of the words. They'd come out of more necessity than out of true need for forgiveness. Most of those past grievances that warranted true apology went to one person, the one that, despite everything, still greeted him like he was welcome, like he was a true friend rather than the man that had nearly gotten him killed (accidentally and occasionally purposefully) on multiple occasions: Charles Xavier. Fifty years of activist work, of pushing forward to pave the way for mutants, countless grievances committed against the telepath, and an aging body that couldn't keep up like it used to later, Erik decided that those apologies were finally due to be paid. 

      The mansion that came into view had changed over the years: wings that were added, land that was excavated, hangars that were built. Yet this was the most familiar place that the man named Magneto knew. Relative to his years lived, the week he'd lived here in 1962 was miniscule, a pinprick on a globe of places filled with big red dots. But this place, this mansion, this school for young mutants, was the one place after Vinnystia that had felt like _home_. That and the one person that lived in it were the only reasons that had made his attacks on the world stray far from Westchester, New York.  It was the one place that had never been fair game, an unspoken rule of "off-limits" that had always been a silent understanding between the two mutants. And yet here he was again, back on the grounds he once trained on, looking into the window of a man that was of course still up, set in a wheelchair and bent over a desk of paperwork. Some things never changed. ...For a long time, Erik had been one of those things, but what was that saying? With age comes wisdom? Erik didn't claim to have wisdom, per se, but he had  _experience_ , and experience told him it was time to exorcise his ghosts and finally lay them to rest. 

 

      As soon as the metal latch lifted on the window, Charles' head lifted and there wasn't much question as to who it was. A study on the second floor left it free from most of the children peeking inside, and the only other mutants that could open that latch were telekinetic, and they should all be in bed by now anyway. "Erik," came the calm greeting. His wheelchair wheeled around at a leisurely pace until he was face-to-face with the older metalbender. "To what do I owe the pleasure?" Erik, for his part, was silent as he moved into the room, the window closing softly behind him with the barest flick of his finger. With the helmet on his head, there was, of course, a small touch of apprehension on Charles' features. He  _could_ sound an alarm, of course, warn the students of the intruder, warn them that their arch-nemesis had touched down on their hallowed ground. But though there was clearly some plan in Erik's eyes, Charles could see no malevolence there. In fact, it was the most serene he'd seen his old friend in a very long time. That was either a very good sign or a very bad sign that the end was nigh. Charles held out hope for the former. Erik didn't stop moving forward until he was just in front of Charles, and then kneeling so they truly were face-to-face, eyes meeting on an equal plane. "Erik? Has something happened?" he asked. One hand, wrinkled and spotted with age, reached for the telepath's. The other pulled the dark helmet from his head, revealing the snow white hair beneath. For the first time in a long time, mind met mind with no barrier between them.

 " _Oh_. Oh, Erik..."

 

       Time does not heal all wounds, but sometimes... Sometimes, time does make them  _right_.


End file.
